In spite of me being a bit 'Bah Humbug' about Christmas, we do try and make everything ourselves for the festive season: Cake with home made marzipan and icing. Christmas pudding. Mincemeat and pastry for mince pies. Brandy butter. The cake is just done, the fruit soaked up over half a bottle of sherry before baking! Just getting the ingredients sorted for the other stuff now. Does anyone else bother?
Always like the thought of making that kind of stuff but never seam to get round to it with one thing and another going on. good on you though for making the effort .
ive done sloe vodka, and 5 gallons of beer today ... heres the grain mashing .. smells greeeeat .. 8)
I do fail on the beer front, gave up quite a few years ago. That's something I want to get into again.
ive just done my 1st all grain beer , a siera nevada ipa i did it in a'' brew in a bag method'' [google it] i used very large stock pot 76 litres added 34l of hot water [160 F] 6kg of grain, 3 types, then left it for 1.45 hrs, for the sugars and starch to be extracted from the grains here it is wrapped up for 1hr 45 mins then removed the bag , with the spent grain boiled the remaining wort for 1 hr whilst adding hops ... then putting 25 litres of it into a plastic jerry can while still at boiling point ,which pasturises the can and the wort, this is now left to cool, and can be kept for 6months+ i will be fermenting it next weekend, i did have 5l left in the pot, so i put that in a demijon with some ale yeast and its already fermenting.. 8) probably 3 hrs work and waiting time, but will [hopefully]make 5 galls of top quality beer for 26p a pint... done with a lot of help from the homebrew forum....
